CAPEC-694: System Location Discovery
An adversary collects information about the target system in an attempt to identify the system's geographical location. Information gathered could include keyboard layout, system language, and timezone. This information may benefit an adversary in confirming the desired target and/or tailoring further attacks.
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Overview
CAPEC-694 (System Location Discovery) is a standard-level attack pattern catalogued by MITRE in the Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC). It describes a recurring method attackers use to exploit software weaknesses.
How the attack works
The phases an attacker typically follows to carry out this attack.
- Step 1Explore
[System Locale Information Discovery] The adversary examines system information from various sources such as registry and native API functions and correlates the gathered information to infer the geographical location of the target system
- Registry Query: Query the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex\Language\Language_Dialect on Windows to obtain system language, Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout\Preload to obtain the hexadecimal language IDs of the current user's preloaded keyboard layouts, and Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation to obtain the system timezone configuration
- Native API Requests: Parse the outputs of Windows API functions GetTimeZoneInformation, GetUserDefaultUILanguage, GetSystemDefaultUILanguage, GetKeyboardLayoutList and GetUserDefaultLangID to obtain information about languages, keyboard layouts, and timezones installed on the system or on macOS or Linux systems, query locale to obtain the $LANG environment variable and view keyboard layout information or use timeanddatectl status to show the system clock settings.
- Read Configuration Files: For macOS and Linux-based systems, view the /etc/vconsole.conf file to get information about the keyboard mapping and console font.
What the attacker needs
Prerequisites
- The adversary must have some level of access to the system and have a basic understanding of the operating system in order to query the appropriate sources for relevant information.
Skills required
- Low skill: The adversary must know how to query various system sources of information respective of the system's operating system to obtain the relevant information.
Resources required
- The adversary requires access to the target's operating system tools to query relevant system information. On windows, registry queries can be conducted with powershell, wmi, or regedit. On Linux or macOS, queries can be performed with through a shell.
Consequences
What a successful CAPEC-694 attack can achieve.
Read Data
Affects: Confidentiality
How to mitigate it
Defenses that reduce the risk of CAPEC-694.
- To reduce the amount of information gathered, one could disable various geolocation features of the operating system not required for system operation.
Terminology & mappings
Mapped taxonomies
- ATTACK: System Language Discovery (1614)
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about CAPEC-694.
- What is CAPEC-694?
- An adversary collects information about the target system in an attempt to identify the system's geographical location. Information gathered could include keyboard layout, system language, and timezone. This information may benefit an adversary in confirming the desired target and/or tailoring further attacks.
- How does a System Location Discovery attack work?
- It typically unfolds over 1 phase. It begins with: [System Locale Information Discovery] The adversary examines system information from various sources such as registry and native API functions and correlates the gathered information to infer the geographical location of the target system
- How do you prevent CAPEC-694?
- To reduce the amount of information gathered, one could disable various geolocation features of the operating system not required for system operation.
- What weaknesses does CAPEC-694 target?
- CAPEC-694 exploits 1 CWE weakness, including CWE-497 (Exposure of Sensitive System Information to an Unauthorized Control Sphere).
- How severe is CAPEC-694?
- MITRE rates CAPEC-694 as Very Low severity with high likelihood of attack.
References
Attack-pattern data is sourced from the MITRE CAPEC catalog (v3.9). Weakness associations link to the corresponding CWE entries on RadicalNotion.AI.
Defend against CAPEC-694
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